Deep Voices #96

The thrill of discovery

Deep Voices #96 on Spotify
Deep Voices #96 on Apple Music

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Hello Deep Voices reader! Thank you for being a part of this ongoing project. Each week, I bring you a one-hour playlist, along with writing on the songs, as well as on life as someone who loves music. Grief, happiness, anger, fear, love: it’s all here. If you enjoy Deep Voices, I’m asking that you consider a paid subscription. It’s 65 dollars a year or six dollars a month—a little more than a dollar each edition. Paying subscribers also get access to several exclusive playlists, including one cataloging the best songs of the year in real time and another of YouTube gems not available on streaming. Thanks for considering and I hope you enjoy Deep Voices!

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We’ve been listening to a lot of John Coltrane at home lately. I picked up a nice copy of My Favorite Things at a Savers in Long Island a couple weeks ago. I’ve never owned that record before, which I realize now was foolish. It’s an unbelievable piece of music. I have quite a few Coltrane records from across the spectrum of his life, though I’d say my favorite period is probably mid-late career, before a full blown free jazz explosion, but after he’d left bop behind. Crescent, Live at Birdland, A Love Supreme. 1964, basically. But then I listened to My Favorite Things, from only three years earlier, and realized I was fooling myself. The leaps in sound he was making could be measured in months. There’s no period better or worse, only brief stops along a magnificent journey he never got to complete. Coltrane died in ’67, still a young man at 40. He had only begun to shred apart what his instrument could do. Fifty-four years later, I don’t think anyone has even come close to playing saxophone at the same level. To playing saxophone. To playing music at all.

I am guessing you, dear reader, are well aware of the prowess of John Coltrane. It is not news. But it really threw me for a loop, having not listened to his music for some time, to find it all so supremely excellent. I’d taken greatness for granted. How could every album be so astonishing? How could they all be so different? He accomplished perfection at such a wide range. My wife and I tried to think of other people as unparalleled in their field. Shakespeare? Michelangelo? Art is so vague; most of the comparisons we could come up with were athletes, from an arena where rules and scores make it easier to measure the scope of success. Simone Biles? Michael Jordan? It’s rarified air. 

After a few days of revisiting Coltrane, though, I wanted to listen to something else. I felt guilty! Sitting on my shelf were a dozen of his albums, hours of unparalleled listening. That doesn’t even begin to touch the music of his I’ve never even heard. Stardust, Bahia—who knows what wonders they hold?! How dare I want to listen to some random lo-fi bullshit? 

Yet I did. I truly did. I abandoned a peerless master for the thrill of discovery. It’s a different type of desire than one of satiation with beauty, one that I think I might like better. Or, at least, one that I need just as much. There is some low level shame in this, satisfaction through consumption. Listening to music on streaming services and reading about it on the internet being somewhere between window shopping and a big splurge. I don’t think I need to explain the joy of new clothes. 

So, after a week or two of nonstop Coltrane, I have been gluttonous the past few days. I needed to do a full accounting of a band I discovered briefly on a playlist made by an artist who has released only one song. I’d been waiting to check out Olivia Block’s new album. And I wanted to hear any songs I could find by people named Txomin. Each time I pressed play: possibility. That’s what this week’s playlist is about. No Coltranes (no offense), but all wonderful artists with unique sounds. Take a listen if you’d like. Or pop on Bahia. Let me know how it is. 

Playlist notes:

—Last year I somehow stumbled across the music of a guy named Txomin Artola, a Basque musician. I was obsessed with the cover of his album, Berriz Arte where he’s wearing a trenchcoat, which he’s cinching shut, standing in front of a roadside motel the Cohen Brothers surely have on a mood board. There is what appears to be a superimposed school bus passing by. A strong vibe. Unfortunately, the music was not good. But I kept going through his catalog. Surely there have got to be some gems from this ’80s folk singer with an eye for eeriness? Nope. Nothing. But then, typing his name into Spotify one day, I stumbled onto the existence of other musical Txomins. I decided to give them a chance. 

Enter Txomin Larre, who has two credits on an album of traditional Basque music. Larre plays drums solidly well. Not amazing. But with some real spirit. So, in the spirit of discovery, we are starting of Deep Voices #96 with one of two recorded tracks by him, music that sounds like a sixth grader’s percussion exercise, if the sticks were made of bamboo and cymbals had not yet been invented. Music for a lazy parade. 

—How could you not want to listen to the “experimental electronic project” co-helmed by the CEO of Amtrak? A much more promising corporate/music crossover than the Goldman Sachs’ CEO’s DJ career. 

Thankfully, Gardner is not at all a dilettante. In an interview, he discussed his musical background, including playing bass in Slumberland Records indie group Lorelei and the electronic group Chessie. The independent music scene, he says, helped instill the community values he holds dear in his work in transportation. I found this honestly touching, though I did not have much hope for the music. I’m still waiting to explore Lorelai, but I was intrigued by Chessie because they were named after a failed 1940s train project. I love a nerd’s commitment. 

Chessie’s album Signal Series is definitely exploratory, with the typical ’90s feel of rock guys exploring new technologies. Some tracks work better than others—I found the more rigid in structure they were, the better. But the music was not bad at all, much better than my low expectation. The song I included here, “Tourist Union #63” (which, of course, is an obscure train-related reference) saunters forward with a glazed guitar riff and nimble snare work, all kept together by the bouncy basswork of (I’m assuming), CEO Gardner. He says, alongside trains, “music is a huge part of who I am.” I rode Amtrak recently for the first time in years. It was a great experience. 

—Olivia Block is a longtime collagist, her music living somewhere between classical, experimental, electronic, and ambient music. She is more interested in texture than genre, freely moving across borders while never sacrificing grit. 

Her new album, The Mountains Pass, is her best. It still has many worlds of sound, but it has as a throughline a baroque undercurrent, owing largely to its use of bits and pieces of courtly piano. Even as the piano subsides, giving way to white noise, shy singing, fierce drumming, there is a stateliness to the music. It’s considered. But it’s not gentle. That dynamic is particularly exciting, the push and pull between some moments’ exactitude against washes of sound. The nearly 13-minute piece “The Hermit’s Peak” I included here moves through stages slowly, like fog rising. If you’re patient, it’s brilliant.

(Unfortunately, the album is not on Apple Music—take a listen to the song via the Spotify playlist or on Bandcamp). 

—Here’s the playlist I was talking about in the introduction, made by the guy behind Urika’s Bedroom, who have released one excellent song (see Deep Voices #87). It’s full of great stuff, but the big discovery for me was The Famous Boyfriend, a duo I’d never heard of despite featuring two members of Hood, including Craig Tattersall who now records hushed music as The Humble Bee. The Famous Boyfriend is fairly in line with Hood with crinkly sounds and lots and lots of echo. But The Famous Boyfriend feels closer to an honest-to-goodness band rather than guys producing a haze of sound. It also sounds incredibly current, the disaffected vocals paired against the simple and rigid drum machines with glimmering melodies on guitars and keys. The music is from the mid-to-late ’90s, so it’s been sitting around quite some time, waiting for me to love it. I’m sorry it took so long. A rich discovery.